The Genea newsletter tells me version 1.4.1 is out, so I download and install Genea 1.4.1. This time round I notice that the option "don’t create a Start Menu folder" is checked by default. Inconsistently, it does not offer to "Do not create a desktop icon", but to "Create a desktop icon".
This release still annoys by putting up a dialog for the scanner every time you start up. Makes you wonder whether they ever try to use this program themselves. Oh, and it still maximizes to fill your screen too.
The File| Load option still lets you pick one person to import from a file (probably with all ancestors), but when I used it to load the single person in a file, it seemed to loop forever. Luckily, the Cancel button works fine.
The true GEDCOM import is still on a separate data menu instead of the file menu. The GEDCOM import does not crash, and testing with a few extremely small files seems to confirm that the GEDCOM and import work now, albeit remarkably slow. The program still does not display anything when the import is done.
The dialog you get when you try to export a GEDCOM shows an empty list of individuals to pick from, even when you deselect "Export all data", yet the GEDCOM that Genea creates does contain the individuals I imported. Stunningly, that list of individuals is deliberately empty, because Genea’s creators think selecting individuals from a list is way too practical an interface to be a good one. No, you must select individuals using their confusing search dialog. You’ll be reaching for the help button when you get that dialog, and That’s a mistake, because Genea still freezes when you click the help button. All you can do is kill Genea, restart it, and once again suffer its scanner dialog box and maximised windows.
The GEDCOM quality has not improved. Disturbingly, immediately after the GEDCOM export has finished, an import starts - I do not know of what, or why. I can only guess that the developers decided to immediately read back their own GEDCOM after writing it, and then forgot to take that out.
Now that Genea finally reads and writes GEDCOM files, however poorly, I can time the performance. Importing the 1 MB GEDCOM takes a staggering 30 minutes and 55 seconds. No, that is not the 100k INDI GEDCOM, it really is the time for the 1 MB GEDCOM. Genea hardly manages 2,5 individuals or half kilobyte per seconds .That makes Genea one of the slowest genealogy program I have measured yet. In fact, it is the slowest of all programs that managed an GEDCOM import, coming in below WinFamily 7.
Genea also takes a lot of memory. The Task Manager shows Genea’s memory usage increasing from about 28 to 71 MB. Apparently, Genea needs 43 MB of memory to import a 1 MB file...
Genea’s memory usage remains that high after the import is done. Only a restart, complete with annoying scanner selection box, and an annoyingly maximised windows, brings the usage down again.
Although it is claiming loads of memory to work in, the hard disk is still rattling incessantly. The performance of this program is so bad, that I would not be surprised to learn that is writing one byte at a time and verifying the result before writing the next byte. The only upside is that timing the import is easy; just wait for the rattling to stop.
Considering the amount of time this simple test takes, it seems only fair to speculate that the creators of this program did not do any GEDCOM import or export tests; with performance so low, it is virtually impossible to create and perform tests, as it just takes too much time.
| file | 1 MB GEDCOM | 100k INDI GEDCOM |
|---|---|---|
| time | 30m55s | - |
| time in seconds | 1855 | - |
| INDI per second | 2,62 | - |
| bytes per second | 569,22 | - |
The numbers and a few brief remarks have been added to the GEDCOM Import Speed overview.
Genea is improving. Unfortunately, many fixes still address issues with
basic functionality. For example, Genea used to crash reading a GEDCOM
containing adoptions.
One change stands out for being wrong. Genea used to keep all its files in
My Documents which is wrong, and now keeps all of them in the Application
Data directory, which is wrong too.
Genea should use the Application Data directory for application data, and My
Documents for user documents. As it is now, backups of My Documents will no
longer make copies of the family database, because it has been misplaced in
Application Data.
The creators of Genea stopped active development in 2009. The Genea project remains available on SourceForge now.
Copyright © Tamura Jones. All Rights reserved.